U.S. Pat. No. 3,982,622 granted on Sept. 28, 1976 to J. A. Bellino et al. discloses a matrix printing mechanism in which magnetic mechanisms move printing wires toward and away from a record medium or paper. The staggered wires approach the record medium from two different directions. Bellino et al. use a fixed position, staggered guiding arrangement such that by the time the wires reach the record medium they converge in a single straight columnar line of dots on the record medium.
Such converging arrangements have been found to be unsatisfactory due principally to the difficulty of adjusting the location of the ends of the wires. This is particularly important with a record medium which is tightly curved over a relatively-small-diameter platen. The dots have a tendency to be staggered on either side of a nominal columnar line. The human eye quickly detects such staggering, particularly when it is repeated from character to character. This is found to be esthetically unacceptable.
There are several patents that show bending print wires in a direction into alignment in which the wire approaches the record medium in a perpendicular direction. Such prior art includes U.S. Pat. No. 3,893,220 granted on July 8, 1975, to J. R. Bittner which shows wire guides rigidly molded in place. The R. A. McIntosh U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,991,870 and 3,991,871 both granted on Nov. 16, 1976, show guiding the wires through bent tubular guides to a fixed guide immediately in front of the record medium. U.S. Pat. No. 3,907,092 granted on Sept. 23, 1975, to Kwan et al. shows bending the wires into a converging straight line perpendicular to the record medium. U.S. Pat. No. 3,991,869 granted on Nov. 16, 1976, to H. R. Berrey et al. shows bending the wires into the desired perpendicular arrangement.